The blank page is a scary thing. When I first started this blog, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. I only knew there were words in me and that limiting myself to writing only sales slicks and technical process workflows wasn’t enough. As the saying goes, I had an itch to scratch. But like a bug bite on your back you just can’t reach, I struggled to find relief.
The general advice then was to start by writing what you know. Okay, that’s all well and good, but I doubted my stories about international conference calls gone long over what epoxy should be used in production weren’t exactly going to help me gain an audience. At least, they weren’t likely to gain an audience that would also enjoy reading my fiction.
It turned then instead to the only other thing that I could think of that I, alone, was uniquely qualified to write about—my kids. Did I just use an em dash there? Why yes, I did. Guess what, human writers use them too and have used them for yeeeeeaaaaarrrrrsss. Not just AIs. But I digress…
My earliest posts were about my eldest child’s first days of day care and primary school. I dubbed him Kiddo then and have referred to him as such on this site ever since. However, as he started to grow and gain more independence, I cut back on his stories—not because I loved him any less or was any less proud of him, but because I recognized that his stories were no longer mine to tell. They were his own. And so I pivoted to more content focused on the actual business of writing.
Some would say that pivot allowed me to provide more focused, reader-facing value. This is all well and good from a content marketing and discovery perspective (some might even say it was a critical SEO strategy for business success), but it turns out that unlike the characters in my book, my kid didn’t stop growing just because I stopped writing about him. Go figure.
Kiddo sent out his first college application.
I wasn’t prepared for the emotional hit from that simple act.
A friend of mine in the field of behavioral science introduced me to the concepts of the arrival and destination fallacies in our talks on perfectionism and happiness. She’s called me out in the past when I would make grand statements like, “I’ll start working out more once the kids are out of the house” after bemoaning my current weight. Statements like that made it seem as if I was somehow trapped by these not-so-small-anymore humans. Admittedly, I could have far worse captors, but eventually, I had to admit they weren’t holding me back. They were just my latest excuse.
The person holding me back has almost always been me.
I, in many ways, am the source of my own complaints, but I also like to think by recognizing what I am, I am also a constant source of progress.
During the peak of the pandemic, I’d become focused on doing what a “good mom should.” I grew accustomed to waiting life out and to sacrifice. Afterward, as our lives opened back up, I convinced myself I needed to compensate for all the things these offspring of mine missed out on (whether they asked for it or not). I didn’t realize what was happening at the time. It was likely just a series of small chips here and there. However, five-ish years later, it has dawned on me that somehow, some way, a large chunk of the person I once was had gone missing (but apparently not the chunk of person around my waist).
I told myself, this simply would not do. Since that conversation, I consciously made an effort to do the things I wanted to do as a person rather than as a mom. It’s been a year or so. This meant I stopped waiting for “better” timing to do the things I enjoy. I made plans with friends. I went out to dinner on a school night. And if these excursions resulted in the kids having to make their own dinners or find their own rides from A to B every now and then, so be it. They were old enough now to handle it, and if I was being honest with myself, had been for some time.
More importantly, I stopped allowing myself to feel guilty about it. They adapted without understanding and without complaint. To be honest, their lack of reaction stung a bit at first. Did they not miss me? Was what I’d done for them over the years truly ‘invisible work?’ The thoughts gave me pause, but I realized that those thoughts were just the latest offering from my internal excuse-making machine. Putting the self-doubts to the side, it was plain to see that by pulling back, I’d actually given them more. I’d given them the tools to become more capable people. I’d given them more responsibility. I’d demonstrated my trust in them and now they were thriving.
You might think, then, after this warm fuzzy of a realization, I would be more emotionally prepared to accept this recent milestone—Kiddo’s latest step toward discovering his own independent self. Yeah, I thought I would be too. Instead, all I can think of is his face turning to us with a smile as he boarded the school bus that first time. I can still picture his little wave and feel my heart once again in my throat as the bus drove away.
It has made me realize that while I may have wandered off for a while, if given the choice, I would have done it all the same.
There is a quote attributed to Robin Sharma that goes like this, “Getting lost along your path is a part of finding the path you are meant to be on,” and another from Tricia Goyer, who stated, “I suppose sometimes it takes getting lost to enjoy the joy of being found.”
I am proud of the young men who, sooner than I might like, will be leaving the nest, but I am proud of myself too. I may not be the person I was once, but I filled that missing chunk with memories rather than regrets. Apparently, I’m still growing up. And maybe, just maybe, the kids are going to be okay.
At the park, the sun shone down with only a few clouds breaking up the brilliant expanse of the otherwise blue sky. I settled onto a bench inside the playground as LT climbed up on the play set designed for the bigger kids. “Look at me,” he shouted as he crawled through the plastic tunnel connecting a pair of slides.
The temperature dropped a good five to ten degrees (F) as we made our way down the gravel path connecting the trail with the outside world. As always, I felt as if we’d been teleported to some distant place as the canopy of trees stretched out above us. “This way,” LT requested, pointing in the direction of one of his favorite places along the path – a small bridge arching over an even smaller stream.
Once again I nodded and soon he was grabbing rocks, twigs, and bits of dirt. The water bulged where LT had added his obstacles, rising over the additional rocks as it rejoined the existing flow. It was hardly Niagara Falls, but it was enough of a difference in height for LT to declare success.
“If you lost all your skin …, would you die?”
